The event officially began on September 12, 1990 in Burleson, Texas, United States, when a group of teenagers gathered to pray for several schools.
At the first official event, held on September 12 that year, over 45,000 students met in four US states, and the movement quickly spread across the country.
[3] It is now an international event; in 2005, over two million students in the U.S. participated, as well as students in Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Scotland, Singapore and South Africa.
He argues at a time of increasing student-initiated religious expression, it featured and promoted aspects of pluralism, such as praying as an expression of one's beliefs rather than of proselytizing – as well featuring as a sense of patriotic evangelical militarism particularly around the time of September 11, in addition to prayer around the flagpole constituting both a religious and civic ritual.
[6] The organization advocating and guiding student participation in SYATP events insists that they be exclusively student-initiated and led without official endorsement or interference, according to rights affirmed by the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District decision of the U.S. Supreme Court—as well as a 1995 Clinton administration assignment of the President's Secretary of Education for legalization of particular school religious activities as long as they passed constitutional guidelines.
Tenn. 2006, pending), the ACLU alleged that a parent group promoted the SYATP event and a National Day of Prayer with support from the school.